Landing an aircraft on the deck of a ship can be a challenging operation, even for the most experienced pilots. The unexpected and changing nature of the shipboard airwake and ship motion can impose significant hazards and limitations in these operations.
Ship operators can, of course, implement maneuvers to improve the overall safety of aircraft landing operations during adverse conditions. For example, ship motion can be reduced by changing the ship heading relative to the waves and/or by changing ship speed. However, these maneuvers result in larger ship heading changes or larger ship speed changes than necessary, and sometimes these maneuvers may not provide the desired result. Moreover, launch and recovery envelopes are prescribed for specific aircraft types on different ship classes. These launch and recovery envelopes are often initially very restrictive, and the flight testing needed to expand the envelopes is frequently difficult to schedule, relatively expensive, and potentially hazardous. Currently, the launch and recovery wind limits and air operation envelopes are primarily determined via the subjective analysis of test pilots, using a time consuming and potentially risky iterative flight test build-up approach.
Hence, there is a need for a system and method that provides precision approach and shipboard landing control that does not rely on changes in ship heading and/or speed to alleviate the impact of adverse landing conditions and/or restrictive operational envelopes. The present invention addresses at least these needs.